Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Featured in the Times of India
From Bamiyan, Where the Taliban Blew Up the Buddhas
Jamal Ayub TNN
Bhopal:
Faiz Mohammed was all of 11 years, when the Taliban decided to blow up the world’s tallest standing Buddhas, carved into a sandstone cliff face in Bamiyan valley, his Afghan home town. The Taliban had first tried to dynamite these 6th century marvels in March 2001, then trained anti-aircraft guns and artillery on them. This failing, they had put anti-tank mines at the statues’ bottom and shelled them, and finally packed explosives into the holes the shelling made, to bring them down.
“We are ashamed of what happened. We did not worship the statues, but it was our heritage,” says Faiz. “Given a chance, we would love to see those statues restored,” he added.
On a month long tour of India, Faiz and his two fellow ‘Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers’, Abdulai (16) and Ali (15) are in Bhopal with three-time Nobel peace prize nominee Kathy Kelly who coordinates ‘Voices for Creative Nonviolence’ (VCNV) and British peace campaigner Maya Evans. The three youngsters are learning to stand up for peace, at the Gandhi Bhawan in the city.
“Have you ever heard of an Afghan promoting peace,” Ali asks casually and everyone in the room falls silent, the only smile was on Mahatma Gandhi, looking down from a framed photograph.
“The world must be tired of the word ‘love’ but it is something we crave for. Our biggest wish in life is to see lasting peace in our country,” he added.
“They see a possible different future. Their message is contrary to war profiteering and war mongering,” said Kelly. “These young kids from Bamiyan can talk intelligently, and people are taking notice,” said Evans.
“We wish to learn how to mobilise people from the villages to protest non-violently,” said Faiz, whose brother was shot dead in front of his eyes. Abdulai’s father too was killed while Ali lost his uncle to violence in the war torn country.
This small group is travelling all over India to learn Gandhian practices. Their stopover in Bhopal was supported by Ekta Parishad, part of a forum - South Asia peace initiative.
On their first foreign trip, the young Afghans were bemused when they saw a puja being performed, for the first time in their lives. “We would definitely go to a theatre,” said Ali, who, like his fellow travellers, has never been to one. Ali was cast in ‘Hazaragi’, a film about a girl’s struggle to study in a school.
It all started in January 2010, over a phone call from Washington, DC to a small tent in Afghanistan, on the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King. US activists wanted to tell these Afghan children about the slain civil rights activist. To their amazement, the kids could recite King’s “I Have a Dream’ speech from memory, the one in which he had called for racial equality and an end to discrimination.
“‘Who are these kids?’ we asked,” recalled Kelly. “As time passed, the more we learned the more we knew. These children were taking great risks and they really mean it when they say they are trying to live a different life,” she added.
The three, incidentally, have so far turned down three major awards. Perhaps Gandhiji would have approved.
